Forum sheds light on China's financial policy priorities for coming years

BEIJING -- The Annual Conference of Financial Street Forum 2025 is taking place in downtown Beijing from Oct 27 to 30, with eminent guests participating in heated discussions on a broad range of topics, including global economic development trends, financial governance, fintech, green innovation, and risk control and supervision.

The forum, inaugurated in 2012 as a platform for global exchange and cooperation in the field of finance, has grown into a major source of updates on China's financial policies, providing a window into the work priorities of the financial sector in the world's second-largest economy.

At the opening ceremony on Monday, Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng said that China's financial system needs to advance risk prevention, strengthen regulation, promote high-quality development and push for high-standard opening-up. He said the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030) will be a key period to promote high-quality financial development, and for China to accelerate its efforts to become a country with a strong financial sector.

Following He's remarks, leading figures of the nation's monetary and financial authorities delivered their own speeches, unveiling the work priorities of their departments for the years to come.

Comprehensive macro-prudential regulation system

Pan Gongsheng, governor of the People's Bank of China, which is China's central bank, revealed that building a sound, stable monetary policy system and a comprehensive macro-prudential regulation system will be important tasks for the central bank over the next five years.

On efforts to build a macro-prudential regulation system, Pan said that priorities will include in-depth efforts to monitor and assess macroeconomic operations, promote high-quality economic development, prevent and defuse systemic financial risks at their source, and strike a dynamic balance between economic growth, economic structural adjustment and financial risk prevention at the macro level.

He said that priorities will also include the continuous expansion of the coverage of macro-prudential regulation in accordance with the development and changes of the financial market, and the enhancement of the financial system's resilience.

The governor noted the necessity of comprehensively assessing financial institutions -- particularly systemically important banks and insurance companies -- and said that additional regulatory measures that match their level of significance should be implemented on the basis of regular supervision.

Efforts will also be made to assess and respond to the impact that the monetary policies, trade policies, sovereign debt risks and geopolitics of major economies have on the operations of China's financial market, Pan said.

Strong financial sector

Li Yunze, head of the National Financial Regulatory Administration, said that toward the goal of building a strong financial sector, efforts will be made to enable the financial sector to better serve the real economy in realizing sustained, healthy economic and social development. This will involve guiding financial resources toward major strategies, key areas and weak links, and toward the growth of modern industries and the development of new quality productive forces.

Li noted that financial resources will focus on intelligent, green and integrated directions, support the upgrading of traditional industries, and promote the growth of emerging and future industries. In an effort to expand domestic demand, greater financial resources will also be directed to programs aimed at boosting consumption.

The official said that his department will actively promote financial services to benefit the people more equitably and extensively, and it will expand the coverage of financial services for small and micro enterprises, private enterprises, and agriculture and farmers.

On the reform and opening-up of China's financial sector, Li said his department will fully implement the "pre-establishment national treatment plus negative list" management system, participate actively in the reform of international financial governance, and contribute more Chinese wisdom to improving international financial regulations and industry standards.

He said that efforts will also be made to balance financial development and security. In particular, work to dispose of non-performing assets and replenish capital to ensure the stable operations of the financial system will be intensified.

Appeal of Chinese capital market

Wu Qing, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), pointed to interest from global capital in asset investment in emerging markets. "Data shows that international capital inflows into emerging markets exceeded $150 billion in the first nine months of this year. During this process, Chinese assets such as A-shares and Hong Kong stocks have been undergoing continuous valuation reassessments, allocation and reallocation."

Introducing his department's work priorities for the coming years, Wu said that the comprehensive reform of investment and financing will be intensified, and the inclusiveness, adaptability, attractiveness and competitiveness of China's capital market will be enhanced, guided by a focus on risk prevention, strengthened supervision and the promotion of high-quality development and new quality productive forces.

The CSRC will also work to consolidate the capital market stability stemming from the improved quality of listed companies, and will introduce policies and measures aimed at facilitating the industrial mergers and acquisitions among these firms.

In an effort to expand institutional opening-up, a plan to optimize the qualified foreign investor system was launched on Monday. Wu said the plan will provide a more transparent, convenient and efficient institutional environment for all types of foreign investors by optimizing assessment, enhancing investment operational efficiency and expanding the scope of investments.

Wu added that the CSRC will also work to enhance the protection of investor rights, and crack down lawfully on illegal or irregular behaviors such as financial fraud, market manipulation and insider trading.

Secure, smart forex management system

Zhu Hexin, head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said that over the years, his department has made efforts to advance the reform and high-level opening-up of the foreign exchange sector, and to facilitate cross-border trade and related investment and financing activities.

On work priorities for the coming years, Zhu said that efforts to deepen the reform and opening-up of the foreign exchange sector will continue, as will efforts to safeguard the bottom line of preventing systemic risks. Work will also be done to build a foreign exchange management system and mechanism that is "more convenient, more open, more secure and smarter."

In particular, the department will work to push the reform of banks' foreign exchange business operations with a view to improving their trade and investment facilitation services.

Zhu said his department will seek to advance the foreign exchange sector's high-standard institutional opening-up, coordinate the advancement of yuan internationalization with the high-quality opening-up of the capital account, and deepen the reform of foreign exchange management in key areas such as direct investment, cross-border financing and securities investment.

The official said that his department will also leverage technologies such as AI and big data to empower supervision, strengthen monitoring and early-warning processes for cross-border capital flows, effectively prevent external risk shocks, and provide a stable, certain environment for the improvement of economic and trade resilience.